Using Dirty Water

I have a customer that has an existing "irrigation system". He is currently using impact rotors on pipe stands to water a nursery of small potted trees and he is getting water from a stream next to the property. This is more agriculture based than commercial or residential. The property is located next to a residential area and he needs to plant and water a new hedge row of 500 feet. I would suggest inline drip tubing on city water but the tap fees would be much much more than the system costs. Is it possible to use drip on stream water? He mentioned past problems with debris in the water so certainly filters would be required. Since city water is not an option, what would you recommend?

Before I would dod any work on the system I would do some research on the water right that he is taking from the stream. I believe in Texas you can not just take water from a stream because the state has the rights to the water. I would find out if there is something legal needed first. Then if anything happens he can not just say so-n-so did the irrigation. Just my 2 cents.

Absolutly not,aquatic eggs would hatch inside the system filters or not and clog the ststem..Drip is for clean water systems only

Click to expand...

Right.....

Let me elaborate on something. We have hundreds and hundreds of miles of irrigation ditch in the Olympic Peninsula, most of these ditches are well over a century old and were originally dug out when the peninsula was a fertile farming area.

Because of all these ditches, we have many many accounts that use this "dirty" water.

All it requires is a good filter on the pump and inline filters on the drip. Every year when the system is started up, all the filters get removed, rinsed off and reinstalled.

Perhaps you should go down to texas or Eastern WA, and see the hundred and hundreds of miles of drip being fed off dirty water in the farms there.

Absolutly not,aquatic eggs would hatch inside the system filters or not and clog the ststem..Drip is for clean water systems only

Click to expand...

Maybe he wants to start a fishery instead then???

I don't usually disagree with you Sheshovel but if the "dirty water" is properly filtered then there shouldn't be much problem. When I worked in Oregon we pulled right out of the creek for our irrigation water with nothing more than a mesh screen over the intake. We cleaned this off every week to ten days and had no problems. We added a wye filter onto the drip zones we had and there were no problems. And this water was taken out of the confluence of Spring Creek and the Williamson River that has some of the best fishing in south-central Oregon. I never saw any dead aquatic eggs (hatched or otherwise) in the five years I was there. Now... mare's eggs were a whole different thing.